Freedom 7 Elementary in Cocoa Beach, Florida

Freedom 7 Elementary sits on 4th Street in Cocoa Beach and serves 408 students in kindergarten through grade 6 (NCES public school search, Cocoa Beach).

The school site gives the street address as 400 S. 4th Street, Cocoa Beach, FL 32931 (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

The Freedom 7 site gives the office phone as 321.868.6610, the fax as 321.877.0931 and the school email as Freedom7Elementary@Brevardschools.org (Freedom 7 Elementary website). The NCES directory carries the full name, Freedom 7 Elementary School of International Studies, with the 400 S 4th St address and the grade span KG-6 (NCES public school search, Cocoa Beach). Its 408 figure is from the 2024-2025 school year, while the directory's address and phone lines are preliminary entries for 2025-2026 (NCES search notes).

Freedom 7 is one of two elementary schools that the NCES search returns for a Cocoa Beach address. The NCES Cocoa Beach search also returns Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School at 1400 Minutemen Causeway with 275 students in PK-6, Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School at 1500 Minutemen Causeway with 1,049 students in grades 7-12, and Project Search at 701 W Cocoa Causeway (NCES public school search, Cocoa Beach). Unlike Roosevelt, Freedom 7 starts at kindergarten rather than pre-kindergarten in that listing (NCES public school search, Cocoa Beach). The junior/senior high has its own Digital Towns guide.

The Freedom 7 site lists a School Resource Deputy page under Faculty and Staff, BPS Before and After Care at Freedom 7 under Parents and Students, and pages for uniforms, a shade policy, supply lists and water safety and swimming certification (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

Freedom 7 received an A for 2025-26, with 700 points across 8 components, 88 percent of possible points and 100 percent of students tested (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file).

In the department's workbook dated September 1, 2026, Freedom 7 is Brevard school number 5021, school type 01, an elementary school (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file). The same workbook sets the elementary cutoff for an A at 62 percent of points or greater (scale note in the FLDOE workbook).

Freedom 7's pass rates sit in the 90s in English Language Arts, math, science and grade 3 reading, above the Brevard figure in every pass rate row (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file; FLDOE 2025-26 district grades file). The district figures come from a separate file that scores Brevard as a whole on the combination school scale, where its 68 percent earned an A (FLDOE 2025-26 district grades file).

The Freedom 7 row reads NO under Title I and NO under charter school, and 11.3 in the column for the percent of economically disadvantaged students (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file). Roosevelt, the other Cocoa Beach elementary school, shows 38.5 in that column (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file).

Every Freedom 7 grade column from 2003 through 2026 that holds a letter in the FLDOE workbook shows an A, including the informational baseline years 2015 and 2023 (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file).

The workbook has no 2020 column and leaves 2021 empty for Freedom 7 (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file). The 2002 column holds the letter N rather than a grade, and the 2001, 2000 and 1999 columns are blank, so the school's graded record in this file starts in 2003 (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file). Roosevelt's row, by contrast, has a B in 2013 (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file).

The state law behind the letters treats an A as evidence of excellent progress and allows a school graded A, or one up by at least two letter grades, greater authority over allocating its total budget from the FEFP, state categoricals, lottery funds, grants and local funds (Section 1008.34, Florida Statutes). The bar also moves: when the A and B schools of a given type together reach 75 percent or more of that type, the State Board of Education raises each letter's minimum percentage for the following year (Section 1008.34, Florida Statutes). A Freedom 7 A in 2026 was earned against the cutoffs printed in the 2026 workbook, not those of earlier years.

Small groups matter here too. Section 1008.34 bars a component from the grade calculation when the school lacks complete data for at least 10 students in it, and it sets a 95 percent minimum for the share of eligible students a school tests (Section 1008.34, Florida Statutes). Freedom 7 tested 100 percent in 2025-26 (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file).

Freedom 7 describes itself as an International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) school, and all of its kindergarten through grade 6 students attend Spanish class (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

Three practices on the Freedom 7 site show how the program reaches families. Student-led conferences happen quarterly, with students presenting their accomplishments to parents through digital portfolios and other media (Freedom 7 Elementary website). The Academics menu lists the Freedom 7 Programme of Inquiry, an Exhibition page, grade level expectations and a United Nations SDG's page (Freedom 7 Elementary website). The Faculty and Staff menu adds a Center for Inquiry (CFI) page (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

The international studies name carries into the official records. Both the FLDOE grade workbook and the NCES directory list the Cocoa Beach school as Freedom 7 Elementary School of International Studies (FLDOE 2025-26 school grades file; NCES public school search, Cocoa Beach). The About Us menu on the school site includes an IB PYP page, informational videos with an orientation slideshow, and school tours (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

Families also find the School Advisory Council, school improvement plans and newsletters, including the APT parent group newsletter, on the Freedom 7 site (Freedom 7 Elementary website). The Parents and Students menu includes a Parent Information and Ayudar page, a Military Family Resources page, and a Freedom 7 student and parent handbook (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

The About Us menu on the Freedom 7 site carries an Elementary Choice Schools item, and the Parents and Students menu links an Application for School Choice and Renewal next to the school's Enrollment page (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

The application page and the Enrollment page linked from the Freedom 7 site are the places to check for each year's details (Freedom 7 Elementary website). School tours are listed under About Us for families deciding whether to apply (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

Florida law sets a separate, statewide path for families who want a school outside their zone. Section 1002.31 defines controlled open enrollment as a system in which districts use the parent's stated choice as a significant factor in assigning students (Section 1002.31, Florida Statutes). Each district school board must allow a parent from any Florida district, whose child is not under a current expulsion or suspension, to enroll the child in and transport the child to any public school that has not reached capacity, subject to maximum class size (Section 1002.31, Florida Statutes). Districts must publish capacity by grade level on their websites and update it every 12 weeks (Section 1002.31, Florida Statutes). A district's process must let parents declare school preferences, including placing siblings in the same school, and provide a lottery procedure and an appeals process for hardship cases (Section 1002.31, Florida Statutes). Whether a given Freedom 7 seat is filled through Brevard's choice application or through open enrollment is a question for the district's Enrollment office, reached from the Cocoa Beach school's site (Freedom 7 Elementary website).

NASA's spacecraft record describes Mercury Redstone 3, also designated Freedom 7, as the first flight of an American rocket with a human on board (NASA NSSDCA record for Mercury Redstone 3).

The City of Cocoa Beach timeline adds that many people watched that launch from the city's beaches (City of Cocoa Beach History at a Glance).

The city and NASA disagree by one day on when that flight happened. The City of Cocoa Beach timeline says the first rocket launch with a human occurred on May 6, 1961, when Freedom 7 took flight and made Alan Shepard the first American to travel into space (City of Cocoa Beach History at a Glance). NASA's spacecraft record lists the Mercury Redstone 3 launch date as 1961-05-05, launched by a Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral, and names Freedom 7 as the mission's alternate designation (NASA NSSDCA record for Mercury Redstone 3).

NASA's record adds that the flight came twenty-three days after Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight, that Shepard exercised manual control of the spacecraft, and that after splashdown the capsule and its pilot were returned by helicopter to the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain (NASA NSSDCA record for Mercury Redstone 3). The same Cocoa Beach timeline records more than 75,000 people coming to the city in 1962 to see John Glenn's Friendship 7 orbit the Earth (City of Cocoa Beach History at a Glance).

Last verified: October 21, 2026, against the Freedom 7 row and elementary scale in the state school grades workbook, Brevard's row in the district grades workbook, the NCES directory search for Cocoa Beach, the 4th Street school's page on the Brevard Public Schools site, Sections 1008.34 and 1002.31, NASA's Mercury Redstone 3 record and the Cocoa Beach history timeline.